Media criticism of the day, papal edition

3/13/13 11:12 AM EDT

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, frustrated with the "ignorant, tendentious and even aggressive media chatter" about the Catholic Church, bites back at those folks on television who "prattle on with their indignant words" about the Church's struggles with sex scandals, gender equality, and the like:

I once read an account of Anne Boleyn’s death. In the moments after she was beheaded her head was held aloft by her executioner, to show the crowd. Her nervous system was shocked, her neurons misfired, her head didn’t know it was severed from her neck. Her eyes blinked, her mouth moved crazily. Those critics who go on TV now to tear down what they don’t even understand: they are removed and unknowing. They are Anne Boleyn’s head.